Fast or Slow?

In the making of wine, the must and resultant wine is essentially sparged with carbon dioxide for a considerable amount of time due to alcoholic and malolactic fermentation. This sparging, I believe, results in a great loss of potential flavour (Another source of flavour loss may also be chemical transformations as mentioned above, but here in a negative direction!). Glycosides may very well be spared from this evaporative and/or chemical loss and can therefore be regarded as a protection from flavour-loss (and by now we are well and truely into not much more than mere speculation…). One possibility, hence, given that glycoside hydrolysis will proceed as soon as the berries are crushed, would be that a rapid alcoholic fermentation, followed by a very mild and slow malolactic fermetation therefore may yield a maximum pool of potential flavour. Many winemakers regard slow fermentation as beneficial since the slower the fermentation, the lesser the evaporative loss of volatile compounds may be. However, a fine line between fast (ie. finish the ferment before most of the glycosides have been hydrolysed) and slow (reduce the rate of carbon dioxide production and temperature to minimize the evaporative loss of volatiles) may be worthwhile to consider.

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